Instant messaging is becoming a popular communications medium, both for personal and professional purposes. In a typical instant messaging system, a user may communicate with another user when both users are online and have a connection to an instant messaging server. A user can create a special list or people, known as a “buddy list” so that the user is informed when his or her “buddies” are online. Client software operating on the user's device (e.g., computer, personal digital assistant) creates a connection with the instant message server when the user logs on to the Internet or otherwise goes online. When the connection is established, the client software may send the list of designated buddies to the instant message server. The server then checks to see if any of the buddies are also online and periodically will recheck the list. When any of the user's buddies are online, the instant message server will inform the user's client software that the buddy is online and therefore is capable of sending and receiving instant messages. In addition, the buddy may be informed of the user's online presence. In this way, users can go online and know which of their designated buddies also are online at the same time and communicate with them using instant messages.
Often, when using instant messaging, a user that fails to read or that otherwise misses an instant message may suffer little, if any, consequences. The user may miss an instant message by being away from his or her client device when the message is received by the client device or by turning off the client device before the instant message is opened. In some situations, however, missing a message may have very negative consequences. For example, if a user's boss sends the user an instant message requesting an urgent response, the boss may assume that the user read or opened the message since the user's online presence was detected by the instant messaging system. Unfortunately, the user's boss has no way of knowing if the user actually received the message, if the user read or opened the message, etc.
It would be advantageous to provide methods and apparatus that overcame the drawbacks of the prior art. In particular, it would be desirable to provide a system, method, apparatus, means, and computer program code that allowed a sender or originator of an instant message to be informed or otherwise notified of an action involving the message after the sender or originator sends the instant message. In addition, it would be desirable to provide a system, method, apparatus, means, and computer program code that allowed the instant message to be saved, forwarded, returned to the sender, etc. after receipt of the instant message.